Paula Allen: Info sought on Alamo hero

Updated 10:10 pm, Sunday, August 7, 2011

I recently read your article on the women survivors at the Alamo and enjoyed it very much. My wife and I moved here to San Antonio in May 2010 and are still learning more about San Antonio. Recently, I was downtown and observed the Alamo Defender's Monument in Alamo Plaza. I noticed that one of the defenders, Christopher A. Parker, had the same last name as mine. I would like to know more about Christopher Parker, as well as to see if there is some relationship between us. Do you have any ideas as to where to start?

Robert C. Parker

The monument you refer to is the Alamo Cenotaph, completed in 1939 with state funds in observance of the Texas Centennial to honor the Texians and Tejano patriots who died during the Alamo battle. (For newcomers to the state, Texas celebrates its birth year as 1836, the year it won independence from Mexico.) “Cenotaph” derives from the Greek words for “empty tomb,” and the sculpture is so named because it is a memorial to men whose burial places remain unknown.

The names of the defenders along the base of the Cenotaph came from research by Amelia W. Williams, who researched them for her 1931 University of Texas doctoral dissertation, “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of its Defenders,” parts of which were published a few years later in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the Journal of the Texas State Historical Association.

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You can read a brief biographical sketch of Christopher Adams Parker on the Alamo's website, www.thealamo.org, on the defenders page of the battle section. For each of the known defenders, there is a link to his entry in the online Handbook of Texas, an authoritative reference also published by the Texas State Historical Association.

This bio shows that Parker was typical of those who fought in the Alamo — young, single and hoping to find a better life in Texas, where men who fought for independence were promised land. Parker was about 22 when he went into the Alamo; the Handbook says he was “listed as a single man in Joseph Vehlein's colony” the previous year near Nacogdoches. His parents were William and Hannah Armstrong Parker, and he is said by the Handbook to have come to Texas from Natchez, Miss.

Parker's birthplace is listed as “unknown” on the Alamo site, but information in a vertical file at the DRT library indicates that his father was from Mississippi, his mother was from Virginia and that he had been educated in Boston, says archivist Caitlin Donnelly.

The Handbook entry notes that he was a descendent of the Sparrow family, English Quakers who had immigrated to Ireland in the mid-17th century. More immediate ancestors had taken part in key engagements of American wars: His grandfather, James Armstrong, fought in the American Revolution at Valley Forge, and his father had served during the War of 1812 in the Battle of New Orleans.

You don't say whether you've already done some family-history research, but if you need to begin at the beginning to trace your own lineage, you are welcome to start at the San Antonio Historical and Genealogical Society library, where registrar Jim Earl says member volunteers “love to help people find their roots.” The society offers classes in beginning and intermediate genealogy, and you may ask for individual help at the library, 911 Melissa; for details, visit its web page at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txsaghs2/.

To learn more about Parker, you may read the contents of his vertical file at the DRT library on the Alamo grounds, which is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Much of this material was donated by relatives of Parker, and Donnelly says there are also published collections that may better document his activities in Texas between his arrival and his death in the Alamo.

To find out whether there is a link between your family and Christopher Parker's, Donnelly recommends that you work backward on your family tree. Since the defender who shares your surname was unmarried and presumably had no children, she notes, “The connection would have to be through a sibling or a cousin.”

Country time Melissa Gohlke, a graduate student working on her master's thesis on the history of San Antonio's gay community, is looking for photographs and memories of Paul's Grove/The Country. She would like to know the exact location on Culebra Road and other details about the bar that operated on a property formerly used as a private sports venue. To share pictures and information, send an email message to Gohlke at mgohlke09@gmail.com.

Email Paula Allen at historycolumn@yahoo.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sahistorycolumn.